Functional Medicine SF

As an experience provider of ketamine infusion treatments in the San Francisco bay area, Functional Medicine SF is a personalized medicine practice focused on root cause resolution. We use your history, your story, and your data to create the most complete picture of your health in order to provide a personalized plan for you to follow to optimal wellness.

About Ketamine Infusion Treatments

The enthusiasm for the use of Ketamine as an antidepressant has clearly traveled to far off destinations but it started from US. In March 2017, medical experts issued a consensus statement after it was noted that off label use of this drug has spread throughout the US. There were several diverse reasons for the popularity of Ketamine.

Reasons to Infuse Ketamine

• Ketamine has proven efficacy in treating depression, both severe depression and treatment resistant depression.
• It is safe to administer even in an outdoor setting (Administered to US marines )
• Ketamine is very fast acting antidepressant and works within 24 hours as compared to a couple of weeks for conventional treatments.
• Ketamine’s rapid onset of symptoms’ relief is particularly useful in treating suicidal tendencies.
• Acute Suicidal Thoughts are not treated in our office, please contact your mental healthcare provider or call 911
• Ketamine has a superior antidepressant effect in alcoholic patients.

Ketamine infusion treatments play a significant role in treatment strategies for the management of resistant depression:

Ketamine Infusion Treatment Optimization Strategies

Optimization involves dose increment to a tolerable level where symptoms start to subside, at least, partially. Ketamine is recommended in low dose of 0.5 mg/kg over 40 minutes for initial therapy and after two weeks, its dose can be increased up to 0.75 mg/kg. It can be given as a single dose and can be repeated several times as per need.

Treatment augmentation strategies

Augmentation involves adding a non-antidepressant drug with the main antidepressant drug. Here ketamine can be used in combination with a variety of drugs like asenapine (Atypical Antipsychotic, or Second Generation Antipsychotic Drug), Benzodiazepines, Modafinil, Lithium and Thyroid hormone (T3). Augmentation strategies are useful in cases of partial response.

Drug combination strategies

Combination refers to when two or more antidepressant drugs are combined for treatment. Here Ketamine can be combined with traditional first line antidepressants like sertraline and escitalopram safely. Combination strategies can be used in both partial and treatment failure cases.

Drug switch therapies

Switching refers to change of primary medication when it fails to provide relief. Ketamine, with novel mechanism of action offers particular promise to treatment resistant depression patients. The results between augmentation and switching are comparable but switching is relatively safe because patient has to take only one drug. Switching strategies are usually applied after initial treatment failure.

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